Howard Pyle, a chronicle by Charles D. Abbott, with an introduction by N. C. Wyeth and many illustrations from Howard Pyle's works.

CHAPTER VIII

THE SPIRIT OF AMERICA
THROUGHOUT his whole career there was always
one subject in which Howard Pyle was pre-eminently
interested, and that was the history of the United States.
Other matters could come and go; he could be feverishly occupied with the Middle Ages, he could be devoted for a time to the misdeeds of barbarous pirates, but
always, even from his very first days in New York, he was
fascinated by history, and felt that he was doing his best
work when he was interpreting the life of some early Colony
or outlining the attack on some British stronghold in the
days of the Revolution. The mass of historical information
which he had accumulated with incessant reading was truly
remarkable. It embraced all the periods and all the phases
of American history, including not only the more distinctively pictorial side of the subject such as battles and
public occasions, but also the political and the economic. His
reputation for this widespread knowledge of history was so
well known to other artists that he was frequently called
upon to supply some fellow craftsman with the details
for a picture. He was proud of this ability to help other
artists; he never failed to give the necessary information,
and to it he always added a word of encouragement. But
the chief merit of his historical research was that it found
its expression in' a series of pictures which interpreted
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